Picturing Black History

Photographs and stories that changed the world

A collaboration of and

Mary Church Terrell

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784). Portrait of American poet seated at a desk writing with a quill pen. Undated hand-tinted color engraving with an original caption which reads: "Phillis Wheatley, Negro servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston."

Picturing Early Black Women Leaders

From Phillis Wheatley Peters to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, leading Black women activists defined their public images through their portraits to advance their ideas.

The Nineteenth-Century Roots of Black Feminism

Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, the National Association of Colored Women, and the foundations of Black women’s struggles today.

Carter Godwin Woodson

Known as “The Father of Black History,” Carter Godwin Woodson (1875-1950) co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASALH) in 1915